The homilist at the Mass closing out the unprecedented Vatican summit on protecting young people from sexual abuse told his colleagues that the church needs a coversion not unlike the Copernican revolution that occurred in the 1500s.
Nicolaus Copernicus discovered that the earth revolves around the sun – a revolutionary idea in a world that took it for granted that the earth was at the center of the universe.
In a story reported by Catholic News Service, Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane told the pope and other bishops gathered at the summit that the church needs the same sort of revolution in its thinking.
“Those who have been abused do not revolve around the church, but the church around them,” he said at the concluding Mass on Feb. 24
“In discovering this, we can begin to see with their eyes and to hear with their ears; and once we do that, the world and the church begin to look quite different,” he said. “This is the necessary conversion, the true revolution and the great grace which can open for the church a new season of mission.”
Pope Francis presided at the Mass and spoke near the end of it, but Archbishop Coleridge had the honor of presenting the homily.